WASHINGTON — An Iranian fleet of high-speed boats in the Strait of Hormuz charged at and threatened to blow up a three-ship U.S. Navy convoy — which included the Everett-based frigate USS Ingraham — then vanished as the American ship commanders were preparing to open fire, the Navy said Monday.
No shots were fired, and an Iranian official in Tehran said the incident amounted to “something normal,” a claim U.S. officials rejected.
Bush administration officials complained that the actions amounted to a dangerous provocation.
The incident raised new tensions between Washington and Tehran as President Bush prepared to depart today on his first major trip to the Middle East.
The three U.S. warships — the Ingraham, the cruiser USS Port Royal and the destroyer USS Hopper — were headed into the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz on what the U.S. Navy called a routine passage inside international waters when they were approached by five small high-speed vessels believed to be from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Iranians “maneuvered aggressively” in the direction of the U.S. ships, said Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. 5th Fleet, which patrols the Gulf and is based at nearby Bahrain.
The Iranian boats dropped “white boxlike objects” in the water in the general path of the Ingraham, which the frigate evaded, according to Cosgriff. The boxes were not retrieved, so U.S. officials do not know whether they posed an actual threat.
“I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes,” a radio transmission from one of the patrol boats warned.
The U.S. ship commanders took a series of steps toward firing on the boats, which approached within 500 yards, but the Iranians suddenly fled back toward their shore, Cosgriff said.
Cosgriff was not precise about the U.S. ships’ location but indicated they were about three miles outside Iran’s territorial waters, which extend 12 miles from its shores, headed in a westerly direction after having passed the narrowest point in the strait.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking aboard the USS New Orleans pierside in San Diego, told reporters on Monday “it would be nice to see the Iranian government disavow this action and say that it won’t happen again.”
Iran played down the incident as a “regular and natural issue. … That’s something normal taking place every now and then for each party and it (the problem) is settled after identification of the two parties,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini told the Iranian news agency IRNA. Similar incidents in the past were resolved when the two sides identified each other, he said.
But U.S. officials rejected that claim. “This is not something that our vessels encounter on a daily basis,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. U.S. military officials said Iran would have no question about the identity of U.S. ships.
Navy jets crash
Two U.S. Navy fighter jets plunged into the Persian Gulf on Monday, after what initial reports suggest was a midair collision, a defense official said.
All three F-18 pilots ejected safely from the planes and were headed back to the USS Harry Truman, the aircraft carrier they were operating from, according to the official.
Associated Press
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
